


The Cost of Loyalty is High

by codenametargeter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 05:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2640269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenametargeter/pseuds/codenametargeter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Emperor spares no one in his sweep of political prisoners after dissolving the Imperial Senate.  Not even an old acquaintance from his home world of Naboo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cost of Loyalty is High

The news has yet to reach Coruscant when a squad of stormtroopers barge into the Alderaanian Senate offices with blaster rifles ready to fire.  They never need to fire though.  No one carries weapons openly amongst the Alderaanian delegation.  It’s too much of a risk especially for a planet clinging to its pacifist culture. 

“On your knees, you traitorous scum!” An Imperial officer steps into the room before the stormtroopers but his order is almost unnecessary as most of the room already had their arms raised.  Only two of the eight staffers have yet to make moves of submission. “Your Princess Leia was uncovered as a member of the Rebel Alliance and a traitor.  By the order of Emperor Palpatine, you are all under arrest for treason and for conspiring against the Galactic Empire.” 

Ferrin makes eye contact with Sabé but she shakes her head a fraction of an inch and they both move their hands away from the hidden hold out blasters that the Viceroy had secreted throughout the offices and his daughter had left in place.  There is no chance for escape and resistance will only get them all killed on the spot. 

The stormtroopers line them up and force down them on their knees, fingers linked behind their heads.  Two troopers move systematically down the line. One secures cuffs around their wrists and then roughly pulls them to their feet so the second can pat them down and check for weapons.  Miraculously, this is only the second time Sabé’s been arrested and she much preferred the first when none in the Trade Federation had dared violate the Queen’s person to check for weapons.  They’d hardly expected a young monarch to do something as uncouth as handle a blaster. (Of course they’d hardly expected Amidala to use a decoy either but that wasn’t the point.)  Tragically, the stormtrooper finds the vibroblade strapped to her thigh and all she can do is shrug unapologetically and sigh as he confiscates the weapon.

It is a quiet arrest.  Black hoods are placed over their heads and they use the secret passageways out of the Senate building.  They’re just the first wave.  By the time the Emperor officially dissolves the Imperial Senate several hours later, the Alderaanians are already in the deepest cells that the Imperial Security Bureau can find for them.  Sabé and the others only learn of the dissolution as they watch their fellow politicians and staffers be led into nearby cells.  Her heart sinks as she recognizes many of those whom Viceroy Organa had secretly recruited to the Rebellion’s cause over the years.  All but a handful is led down the halls.  How can the Alliance possibly survive this?

Almost ten days pass by before a sympathetic guard tells Sabé and the Alderaanians that their planet was destroyed three days ago by the Death Star at the command of Grand Moff Tarkin. Shock sets in. Being arrested is one thing but learning of the genocide of your people is another.  It hits the others worse.  She’d lived amongst them and served their royal family for over a dozen years but it hadn’t made her any less Naboo.  She can’t possibly comprehend the mind-numbing grief of losing your entire panic.  Instead, she mourns the loss of everyone she’d known for those years.  They’d given her a home and become her family when she had none. And now they all are gone.

There’s little else to think about in those small dark cells.  She sleeps when she can and tries not to think about the only times she ever gets to leave her new living quarters. Torture sessions just become a part of her life.  Every day, like clockwork, two stormtroopers drag her from her cell and took her away for a conversation with one of the Emperor’s highly trained interrogators. Most of what she tells them is babbled gibberish.  That’s the problem with torture: people tend to say whatever they think the interrogators want to hear to make the pain stop.  Most of it isn’t true.

Time passes strangely there.  She doesn’t even want to know how long she’s been locked away in the depths of Coruscant so she never bothers counting the days. Slowly, after what she thinks has been a year, the torture and interrogation sessions tapered off. Whatever intelligence she might have is no longer fresh and relevant and so she just becomes one of many political prisoners that the Emperor tries to pretend don’t exist.  The darkness and the silence that envelope her almost makes her wish that they would continue the interrogation sessions.

Instead, she is left alone with her thoughts and _nothing_ and it is enough to almost drive her mad.  If she’s honest with herself, it really does drive her a bit mad.  She starts seeing old friends, first out of the corner of her eye and then right in front of her.  Really it just makes sense to start replying when they talk to her and it doesn’t matter if they’re alive or dead.  She’s somewhere between the two herself so it only makes sense that she talk to the hallucinations. What else does she have to do?

It is almost seven years before the monotony changes and it takes her a while to realize that she’s not dreaming nor hallucinating. One day, armed troops enter the cellblock, swiftly taking out the stormtrooper guards who’d become slow and complacent.  They are from the Rebel Alliance or rather the New Republic as they prefer to be called now. The Emperor is dead and this New Republic has claimed Coruscant to be their new capital. 

After being imprisoned for so long, it takes the former prisoners a week if not longer to slowly adjust to being out of the cells and to receiving proper care and nutrition.  After years, they’re all emaciated and are bit shadows of their former selves both in body and mind.  It’s a week before Princess Leia herself comes to visit the Alderaanians, embracing each one like family.  There are tears in Sabé’s eyes as Leia reaches her bedside and hugs her former instructor tightly.  Seeing the princess she’d known since she was a child again is a day that she’d never thought would come. _Forgive me, Bail_ , she whispers silently, _but I have to tell her now_.  Breaking a promise to a man she has the utmost respect isn’t something she does lightly but the young woman who embraces her deserves to know the truth about her mother. 

But there will be time for that. The Empire is far from dead but it is on the run and so there will now be plenty of time for the truth.

Or at least that’s what might have happened and in a happier universe, it did.  But that is not this universe. 

The New Republic eventually did liberate Coruscant and find Palpatine’s jail full of political prisoners from the dissolution of the Senate and beyond but there was no woman named Sabé amongst them. 

Her home world did not protect her within those walls. That’s the problem with being known to the Emperor and sharing a face with a former Queen when you are arrested for treason.  Palpatine assumed that she must know something and instructed his interrogators to focus their attention upon her. But she was too well trained and too loyal to the memory of her Queen and told them nothing.  He never learned what she knew of the Rebellion’s inner workings nor that the princess of Alderaan was born Leia Skywalker. She’d always meant it when she said that she’d die for Padmé Amidala and her children.  Within four weeks time, the Emperor signed the writ for her execution.

Six years later, all that was left to find of Sabé, former chief handmaiden to Queen Amidala of Naboo and former advisor to the Senators Bail and Leia Organa of Alderaan, was a file in the prison databanks with her name, crime, and date of execution.

Padmé’s secret died with her.


End file.
